


A Pathfinder's ABC

by Buggirl



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-10-17 23:05:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10604142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buggirl/pseuds/Buggirl
Summary: A series of short fics set in the Andromeda galaxy.





	1. A - Alec

Some dream of loved ones, some of nothing at all. In his last gasps, he discovers the truth. That your life really does flash before your eyes. The moments he’s forgotten creep back in and resonate louder than they did when the memory was first created.

His first trip to Kings Canyon, where he ran amongst green giants, to Lake Tahoe at age ten, the struggle to find where his family were camped and the bite of cold alone in the wilderness. The exhilaration of freedom and exploration of the unknown that made him run into the dark woods whilst his parents shouted his name into the cool, early spring sky.

His first kiss at thirteen, soft, inviting pink lips and the nervous laugh he let loose, the beat of his heart reverberates through his whole body and the thump in his chest so thunderous he thinks it might burst open. The same feeling repeats as the team waits to cross into the stream of the Charon Relay—ten, nine, eight— this kiss, the beginning of a new relationship with the strange, and the unknown.

As the oxygen in his brain diminishes, he hears Ellen’s whispered voice in his ear. The satisfied coo and quiet laugh wash over him after they first make love and the countless times since they met, kisses on bruises from training and action ease with each sultry pass of her lips over tired and aching muscles.

The moment when both Sabine and Gabriel reach and grab on to his pinkies with small stubby hands and the sensation of his heart leaping into his throat when they laugh in unison. The first time SAM’s voice travels through his synapses, the intimacy created through neural pathways not even experts knew existed, a chill and a sense of peace descend.

Ellen again, her voice rasps and strains against the fight that no mortal can ever win. Soundlessly he repeats the promise to her and calls her name. Sabine’s quiet and labored pleading fades with his vision. He grabs and squeezes her hand for as long as he can.

_Every great moment in our history began with a dream._


	2. B - Brother

_His hands, now bigger than hers, grab her firmly by the wrists and she feels the sting as her palms slap hard against her cheeks. “Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself–”_

_She begins to cry “Stop it, stop it, I’ll tell Mom, stop it, Gabriel.” Her pleas go unheeded._

Sabine takes a seat beside him in the med bay; she doesn’t know what she’ll tell him when he wakes– if he wakes.

She bows her head and runs a thumb over the burn scar on her wrist, another childhood reminder of her brother’s torments. After pushing her against a stove where their grandmother was cooking pasta, the pot tipped and boiling water scalded her wrist. In response, her anger at her brother manifested, not so much because of the injury he caused, but the blame their Grandmother, her dear Mamie, placed on herself for the mishap.

Sabine, lacking the same physical strength of her brother, planned her revenge accordingly– pretending to choke on bubble gum they stashed away after Halloween and were consuming in secret. She had lain on their cubby house floor flailing, gasping and holding her hands to her neck and laughing inwardly as his distress mounted and turned into forceful, heaving sobs and cries of ‘no, don’t die!’ His weeping didn’t stop until well after the prank was over.

Twenty years and six hundred years of sleep later and she still has a measure of guilt about that.

“What if he doesn’t wake, SAM,” she mumbles under her breath. The fear she feels at losing yet another family member overwhelms her.

“He has the best prognosis for someone in his condition, Sabine.”

She presses a thumb and forefinger against her eyelids. “I know that’s what they say, but what if they’re wrong?”

“Both Doctor T'Perro and Doctor Carlyle have said more than once that Gabriel should make a full recovery.”

Sabine takes Gabriel’s hand and places it over hers then brings them both to her cheek. “Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself.”

She knows her pleas will go unheeded.


	3. C - Crush

A thousand year age gap isn’t that much in the greater scheme of things —not really when she thinks about how long she’ll live. However, worry and doubt creep in when she thinks about how long a krogan might actually live. He’s already fourteen hundred years old, how many years does he have left? Not to mention what her mother and father would have said had they still been alive? They struggled to give her this living, to be more than some krogan mercenary’s— she bites her tongue at the pejorative term she’s thinking. It’s simply they wanted more from her than to be yet another asari dancer.

“Damn it,” she curses, glad for the privacy of the Tempest’s medbay. She’s not allowed such an indulgence of thought processes since they arrived in Andromeda, but now she can’t help it. What is it that Harry teased her about once— do asari dream of white weddings and white picket fences? She’d only recently heard about this phenomenon, of the way humans associated roles to individuals should they chose to ‘pair up’. Secretly, the idea fascinated her, so different to her own family’s experience. To find love and settle down, raise a family if desired. All these things she contemplated only in fantasy, for in reality, and for the most part, it was something that didn’t feel practical or even real. However, here in Andromeda– on some golden world like Thessia, she imagines a hanging garden, fragrant flowers, the greenest of grasses and a view over a river or lake.

She sighs. By the goddess she’d hopes it doesn’t turn out to be like Omega. A grimy mining world where seediness infects every pore, where you expect corruption and vice around every corner. A place where innocence never lasts long. Even Eos with its barren and irradiated desert is more appealing.

A loud laugh escapes her and she shakes her head. The job right now is to make sure the Pathfinder and her crew are healthy, not some mistaken dream of domestic harmony and bliss in some far-flung paradise. She sits down at her desk, allows one more hedonistic thought on krogan anatomy then returns to her work.


	4. D - Dance

There’s a switch in her head that she’d like to turn off sometimes, especially when her mind is racing. So much to do, so much to fix, Gabriel still in a coma, and here she is wasting time to a heavy beat of music in the hailed hall of Kadara’s Queen.

Thud. Thump. Thud.

There’s no melody, no undercurrent of peacefulness and Sabine feels the familiar pricks of a headache behind her eyes.

What she wants is to meld back into the wall, be the wallflower she’s always been, the scientist, quietly observing and taking notes but never interfering with the subject of observation. Politicking is not for her.

She watches Sloane, sitting like the royalty she’s proclaimed herself to be, the light that shines over her-- a Kadara sunset of pink and gold that ordains her. Sabine then thinks of Reyes, slinking away like snake, and she regrets accepting his invitation. There’s an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach about this whole scenario— this is supposed to placate the angara; show good will towards the new alliance, but the buzz and tingle she feels in the room is awkward and unpleasant. She wonders if having SAM in her head makes her more attune to the electro chemical biology of the angara, most here don’t appear to like humans or any one from the Milky Way at all.

Sabine leans against the wall; its cold metallic surface brings her little comfort. She closes her eyes for a moment and the music, surprisingly, reminds her of home, of a time when she sat as a child watching her parents work together in their home built lab. Their dance, a strange respite from heads bent over terminals, data pads passing between one another and words spoken that she yet didn’t understand. The vision of them as the music volume increases is one where their fingers entwine, his arms creeping around her waist and hers around his neck. They laugh, a sound so rare from him, from her, from them, _together_. The memory makes her smile.

She opens her eyes, the dance here, in this room, is only one of politics, of artifice, of subterfuge, deception and aggressive posturing. The light from outside that shines over Sloane is as intense as the one who wears Kadara’s crown. It hurts her eyes and makes her blink. She turns and walks to the door to ask where Reyes has gone. The surly turian shrugs then puts up a single talon and points towards the entry hall. Sabine makes it an opportunity to leave the room.

The music is a dull beat behind her and her voice echoes against the empty void of the corridor as she calls his name.  She sees an open door ahead and murmuring from within. It’s a small warehouse and Reyes rummages amongst the crates. She enters, leans against a pillar and emits a loud click of disapproval, enough for Reyes to turn his head. He ignores her and turns back to his rummage until he finds what he’s looking for and holds up a bottle with a loud exclamation. Sabine shakes her head in annoyance. All this manoeuvring for a bottle of alcohol?

A sound from the corridor sets Reyes into panic, remnants of the buzz and tingle she had before plays out all over her body, but this time, enjoyable. Pressed close against him, his arms around her waist, hers around his neck, their lips and tongues merging into a dance she was not expecting. As the words of the person behind them dissolve into ambient sounds of retreat, they separate and the smirk he wears disarms her. He grabs her hand and they run.

She finds herself atop of one of Kadara Port’s highest buildings. Only the tip of the sun peaks above the horizon, sunset is almost complete. Fragments of dusty pinks and subdued yellows reflect onto the blue grey steel of buildings and dull the effects of the neon signs of the bustling open space below. As the whiskey slides down her throat, her anger at Reyes, both for bringing her to Sloane’s party and the earlier kiss, dissipate. He has his reasons, she guesses.

Sabine considers her own motives for being here, she said yes for a reason; if the outcasts can be reasoned with, if Sloane can be reasoned with, and if Reyes can get her one step closer to the Charlatan, then this, this dance will have been worth it. She stares at the last vestiges of the sunset, then to Reyes. He winks, and the buzz and tingle return.


	5. E - Evfra

Evfra notices the scar at first, a noticeble burn and red tinged marked clearly above her right eye. The scar above his eye is deeper, more grainy and raw, and he wages his was obtained under much greater stress than this ‘ _vesoan’_.

She stands next to Jaal, but its Jaal doing all the talking, saying how much these aliens have done, to save the scientists on Havarl and to help the resistance on Voeld. All Evfra can think is how Jaal clings stubbornly to the idea that those from the Jarevaon Imasaf are trustworthy. ‘Gosan yav daar’ he says to Jaal in private and well out of earshot of the one called Ryder.

‘No you are mistaken, Evfra,’ Jaal replies. ‘It is you who are the stubborn one. You need to let in some light now and then. Think of the victories against the kett, against all the enemies of the Angara. We need to stop them, killing, murdering and enslaving our people —these humans can help us. I’ve seen them, talked with their crew. They know how to fight and they know the remnants, the monoliths as well; they even say we sound like home to them.’

Evfra’s brows furrow and his scowl releases momentarily, home has not been home since the kett arrived and the scourge with them.

Jaal continues. ‘They have brother’s, sisters—family and this one—‘ he points to Sabine standing nearby. ‘She has lost her father, her brother in a coma. She saved our most revered Moshae Sjefa. I think we can safely call her _sholaon,_ I feel this. I know you do too.’

Evfra snorts loudly but still he can’t deny the aura coming from Jaal; it’s one of excitement, energy—he glows with the mention of hope. Evfra feels it in his bones, the bioelectric current familiar to all Angara. As much as wants to deny this connection, he’s a tactician at his core, he knows when to say yes to an alliance and when to cut it loose.

‘ _skkut_ ’ he mutters under his breath. ‘Go then, but I will not hesitate to cut your new family out like a malignance should they not be _tavetaan’_

Jaal smiles and Evfra senses the self-assuredness of his comrade. Evfra hopes it’s not some _Teroshe—_ but then he remembers everyone is expendable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Angara language used:
> 
> Vesoan - explorer
> 
> Jarevaon Imasaf – the ‘Masaf Shell’ Galaxy (Milky Way Galaxy)
> 
> ‘Gosan yav daar’– Being Stubborn, literally “clinging to a rock.”
> 
> Sholaon – adopted sibling
> 
> tavetaan– friend comrade/place like home
> 
> skkut – shit/fuck/expletive
> 
> Teroshe – cruel joke


	6. F- Family

Vetra’s talon scrapes down her mandible, concern drawn across her stark turian features. Her chastisement of Sid echoes around the empty chamber, and Sid, like most teenagers, fusses and pouts before walking towards the shuttle in a surly huff. Vetra shakes her head, turns to Sabine, and sighs. The relief on her face is unambiguous —not the first time she’s gone through something like this in relation to her kid sister. The worry never ends, and for the first time she sees in Sid, herself. She can’t help shake the worry from her, chuckle and shake her head once more.

‘Kids, can’t live with them, can’t kill ‘em’ is Drack’s motto, and has been for as long as he can remember. Of course, he means kids that aren’t krogan, and anyone under the age of one hundred. Although he may live apart from the Initiative, to have Kesh living on the Nexus, and a proverbial splinter under Tann’s scrawny salarian fingernails, gives him immense pride. Family means him standing between the future for krogan and a cruise missile-- he’s got the quads for it as much as he has the heart.

Kallo says his life is an exciting one, he’s seen more in the short time of the Initiative than most salarian’s will see in a lifetime. He knows there’s an ark out there, one with people just like him, who joined for more than a bureaucrat’s life. He stares at his hands and then over to Suvi, he turns and stares into the empty space ahead, expecting a sense of loneliness to wash over him. Instead, he hears Ryder’s voice and hope fills his heart. 

Liam’s heart is embedded in a bunch of holo pictures of his family standing next to old cars and he wonders why he left. He still hasn’t figured out the real reason, why he said yes to the Initiative. He wasn’t looking for an escape, nothing consciously anyway. Maybe it was because he was handpicked by the Pathfinder, or simply his sense of adventure. He tells himself that Alec Ryder saw something in him that he couldn’t see in himself. There’s a whole galaxy to explore, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll find out what made Alec choose him.

Lexi’s heart is in the right place, concern marks every statement she makes, even if the crew don’t like it. Three hundred years feels like barely a scratch on the surface of all manner of medical training-- the real test is out here, with the Pathfinder and her team. Her concern is as a consummate professional, but if only they knew, at night-- she lies awake, considering them more than just patients, more than acquaintances and friends, they are family.

Cora has tried to fit in, the proverbial nerd at a jock party. It was the same way amongst the asari despite a shared biotic bond. She’s the outsider, the one who’s destiny to take over the role of Pathfinder was ripped from under her feet, with no comment from anyone. It’s not the first time something so significant was taken away; she knows it won’t be the last. If it weren’t for her loyalty to Alec, she might have baulked at remaining part of the Pathfinder team. She still yearns for something-- but she can’t quite put a finger on exactly what that is. Surprisingly, she’s not angry, instead it’s a strange calm and a loyalty transferred from father to daughter.

Gil’s not convinced anyone but he knows what they’re doing. Not on this ship anyways. There’s a weight he carries he feels he can never put down. Even back on the Nexus there seems little relief. The bar at least has good whiskey and company. When he discovers Ryder propped up on a stool, he has her in his sights for his poker face. She listens to him, and there’s a sceptical glance from her when he talks about Jill. He senses the discomfort, the sideways glance and the pursed lips and when the words ‘that doesn’t sound like a friend’ he doesn’t hear censure, but wisdom beyond years and advice he might not of otherwise considered.

Jaal’s knows these strangers that walk amongst them need time to adjust as much he and his people do. The story of a father, daughter and brother, makes his skin tingle-- empathy for an alien he knows little about. His own family torn apart by the kett and the horrors that followed. The Roekaar and his wayward siblings bought to reason by the steady hand of the Pathfinder. He welcomes her with open arms and his family fall into line. Trust is more than just a blood tie, its honoring an agreement, helping those who need it with measured decisions. His heart sings.

Peebee doesn’t need family. That’s what she tells herself anyway. A part of her though doesn’t believe it and for a brief moment, she misses her mother, her sister and all that she left behind. Leaving the Milky Way she thought she’d found a sense of self, but taking someone for granted isn’t that. Leaving the Nexus and K-- she stops from uttering the name-- the best thing she’s ever done; however the restlessness in her blood remains. It’s only when she finds Ryder, and the crew of the Tempest does she feel the return of that easy spirit only her family had given her.

Ryder asks Suvi why she is so hopeful, given everything that’s happened since they arrived. Suvi looks to her and her eyes sparkle, she’s spent a lifetime justifying herself to others, all she can do is smile. The truth though, blends in with the tea she drinks and the tears she’s shed for her family back home. When she hits the comm to the meeting room she hears laughter, cheer and bawdy jokes and remembers her heart is more than a rock and more than the expanse of space before her.

Sabine doesn’t dwell, her family is here in her heart—her mother and father forever a part of her. She taps her chest, her brother, Gabriel, still comatose, lies there too. If she were of a religious bent she might pray that he comes around soon, for now, she just hopes, and leaves the prayers for those who truly believe in a higher power. 

Her boots tap against the hard metal of the Tempest’s floors as she makes her way to a squad meeting. Her eyes dance from one member to another as they gather and chatter in a small space. Then in hits her, family need not be blood, it can as easily be two hearts as lovers, an adopted Grandfather, a less irritating brother, a friend who knows loss, one who know the divine, or an ally to show you the way. 

Family comes in many forms, loved or despised, a tether to someone not necessarily of your choosing, or perhaps it is, no blood mix necessary – we are six hundred years from home, our families-- if they weren’t with us—are left behind to who knows what fate. The family we have in Andromeda, is here and now.


End file.
